Spin gap of the three-leg S=3/2 Heisenberg tube

Abstract: The ground-state properties of the three-leg S=3/2 Heisenberg tube are studied using the density-matrix renormalization group method. We find that the spin-excitation gap associated with a spontaneous dimerization opens for the whole coupling regime, as seen in the three-leg S=1/2 Heisenberg tube. However, in contrast to the case of S=1/2 tube, the gap increases very slowly with increasing the rung coupling and its size is only a few % or less of the leg exchange interaction in the weak- and intermediate-coupling regimes. We thus argue that, unless the rung coupling is substantially larger than the leg coupling, the gap may be quite hard to be observed experimentally. We also calcuate the quantized Berry phase to show that there exist three kinds of valence-bond-solid states depending on the ratio of leg and rung couplings.